Stairway to Heaven: Ancient Concepts About Heaven and the Afterlife

Stairway to Heaven: Ancient Concepts About Heaven and the Afterlife

We recognize heaven as a place to which we will go after our deaths if we have led a good or virtuous life. It is a paradise accessible by earthly beings depending on their standards of faith or goodness. On the other hand, hell is home to evil, misery and many other unpleasant things - a place to which we will be sent if we have led unvirtuous lives. However, the concept of the afterlife in the ancient world is more varied and somewhat more complicated. Unlike travelling to hell, which seems to be a much quicker process, a soul’s journey to heaven consist of various tests and layers before it could reach its final resting place.

Prometheus Forms Man and Animates Him with Fire from Heaven by Hendrik Goltzius (1589) (Public Domain)

Indian Svarga and Greek Elysian Fields

Indian religions describe svarga (‘heaven) as a transitory place for righteous souls who have performed good deeds in their lives but are not yet ready to attain enlightenment. Therefore, a soul would pass through svarga before it is subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to the good or bad karma it has managed to gather in its life. This is somewhat similar to Greek and Roman mythology where the dead would usually either travel to the Underworld where they would stay or to the Fortunate Isles (or Isles of the Blessed), an earthly paradise for those who were judged as pure enough in their three lifetimes to gain entrance to the Elysian Fields, the final resting place of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous.

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